Today, Nvidia’s GPU Technology Conference (GTC) is kicking off, and the first wave of announcements include workstation certifications for its VR Ready Program.

Similar to those in the consumer-oriented Nvidia VR Ready program, except that these are for professional workstations, the exact minimum requirements consist of a Quadro M5000 or M6000 graphics card and Intel Core i5-4590 or Xeon E3-1240 v3 and higher. Nvidia is also working together with system builders to certify additional systems.

Currently, that list consists of the Z840, Z640 and Z240 from HP together with the Dell Precision 7910, 7810 and 5810. Lenovo’s P910, P710 and P500 are also included, and there are more coming, too.

Many of the past forms of virtual reality or information displays (which often are large display-filled rooms or rooms with large rear-projected screens) are tremendously expensive, and they aren’t mobile. An HMD, on the other hand, is much more practical, as it allows users to accomplish the same tasks from a desk chair and costs significantly less, even in situations where the graphical horsepower demands increase due to an HMD’s demands.

In contrast to the consumer market, VR in the professional environment is for more than just entertainment. Nvidia gave some examples for potential uses: For example, an architect can use VR to help create, able to "walk" through a building design before it is physically constructed. Or a surgeon could walk through the operating room in an upcoming hospital to check whether everything is in the most accessible place possible. Car manufacturers are working with VR to design vehicles, too.

Together with the professional VR Ready certificates, Nvidia also announced VRWorks for the developers behind various applications. These can be used in both the consumer and professional market and include various libraries for multi-res shading, VR SLI profiles (for example, to assign one GPU per eye), GPU direct, warp and blend, along with many other features.